It’s Not Just the Economy, Stupid!

Scott Brown’s US Senate campaign victory in Massachusetts, the bluest of blue states, is for the Democratic establishment in Washington like that moment on the beach when the tide suddenly goes way out for miles just before the horizon rises in a mighty tidal wave.

Note to President Obama and the Congressional Democrats: you can stand there, keep doing what you are doing, and get your majority washed away in the next election, or run for your political lives to the high ground. The high ground is where you should have been all along – the ethical, practical and bipartisan high ground where candidate Obama had promised to lead the nation.

First, the high ground means governing from the center and abandoning left-wing ideology. The path there begins by letting the House and Senate healthcare bills die quietly. The President would be wise to pull the plug himself. Americans are speaking loudly and clearly that they don’t want healthcare expansion without responsible cost controls. And they don’t want government-run healthcare, either.

This last point will be difficult for President Obama to accept. On the campaign trail Obama gave the impression that he was open to bipartisan solutions. “Whatever works,” he liked to say. But when it comes to healthcare, Obama has been as ideologically determined to move in the direction of a state-run system as George W. Bush was to invade Iraq. Here is Obama sharing his views on American healthcare before his campaign for President. It seems that Obama has wanted a single-payer system all along. He never seriously considered more practical alternatives.

Democrat Senator Ron Wyden proposed a healthcare reform bill that would reduce per capita healthcare costs and cover everyone with health insurance. Wyden’s bill is market- and consumer- driven. It would thus move the United States further from the state system about which most left-wing Democrats fantasize. Because Wyden’s bill employs market incentives, it attracted bipartisan support. It could still achieve the progressive goal of universal healthcare if only rigid progressives would open their minds to more creative non-statist solutions.

Second, the high ground where Democrats need to go for their political survival consists of serving the broad and long-term needs of the nation. For a bill like Wyden’s to pass, the Democrats would have to abandon the special interests that get in the way of good legislation. Democrats think they need these special interests, like trial lawyers and unions, to keep themselves in office, but if in fact these forces can’t hold Ted Kennedy’s old seat in Massachusetts, then they can’t protect any Democrat anywhere. Democrats might find that voters will reward them for simply doing the right thing. They should try it some time.

Third, the high ground is also the place of honest government. Candidate Obama promised Americans no more “business as usual” in Washington, and then proceeded both to engage in a string of backroom deals and to endorse pork-laden stimulus legislation, which really was not much of an economic stimulus at all. A more correct title was probably “Incumbent Re-election Stimulus,” and its efficacy will be surely and severely tested during the fall elections.

Voters have watched in disgust as corrupt bargains – rightly seen as bribes – have been cut with one special interest after another. Examples include the President’s unsightly arrangement with Big Pharma, the special goodies for swing-vote Senators from Nebraska and Louisiana, and lately the giveaway to unions in exempting their luxurious healthcare insurance plans from the taxation now planned only for other employer-provided “Cadillac insurance.” This is not what people voted for in the last, or any other election.

Nor were voters fooled when Congressional leaders claimed that their healthcare bills paid for themselves. The promise of hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to Medicare through imaginary savings does not stand up to scrutiny. Gimmicky time lines with revenues up front but cost explosions in unseen outlying years were equally misleading.

Last but not least, the high ground requires fiscal sanity. One must add rampant irresponsibility with taxes and spending to excessive ideology, special-interest-based legislation, corrupt dealings, and dishonesty, in the list of items infuriating voters. Economic policies fit for a banana republic are unbecoming to the United States of America. The Massachusetts result clearly indicates a coming wave with a power seldom seen in American politics. A little fiscal responsibility right now might blunt the impact. It would be especially impressive since it is so contrary to the nature of our elected representatives.

One year ago it would have been inconceivable to imagine that in 2010 an unknown Republican would be elected Senator from Massachusetts. The only thing Democrats have going for themselves is the cold comfort that the public doesn’t much like Republicans either. Democrats have a few months to make themselves less loathsome, but will they change or will they just bury their heads in the sand and pretend they didn’t hear the most recent shot from the the spot where the first American Revolution began?

Democrats can pretend they are victims of the poor economy, or that Martha Coakley, the Democrat who lost in Massachusetts, was a shoddy candidate. They can engage in more shenanigans and try to keep Mr. Brown from coming to Washington until after they pass one of their bloated healthcare bills. They can sit on the beach drinking the Kool-Aid until the shadow of that big wave arrives to block out the sun and comes crashing down on them.